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Wednesday, December 20, 2017

The Bot Libre Android SDK makes it easy to develop your own chat bot app, or add a chat bot to your own app.
You can create an app for your business, or to make money from mobile ads and upgrades, or just for fun.

Bot Libre's own demo apps have over 1 million downloads on Google Play.

The Bot Libre SDK is more than just a library, it includes a complete Android app.
The SDK includes a connection API that wraps Bot Libre's web API, and a user interface for all of Bot Libre's components including:

Chat bots

Live chat

Avatars

Forums

Issue tracking

User management

Graphics library

Script library

The SDK chat bot interface includes support for:

Text chat

Speech

Continuous speech recogition

Animated avatars

Mobile assitant commands

Getting Started

You have 4 choices when using the Bot Libre SDK, depending on your functionality requirements and programming ability.

Use the complete Bot Libre app or Demo app. You only need to change the bot information, logos, and redeploy the app.

Use some of the UI components of the Bot Libre app and customize them to suite your needs (refer to the SDK source code).

Use the botlibre-sdk.jar and the SDKConnection Java class. This gives you access to the low level API to build your own app interface (refer to the JavaDoc for more information).

Use the Bot Libre web API directly using HTTP calls and XML (refer to our web API for more information).

This "how to" article follows the first method, which is the easiest way to build an app.

Although this method requires minimal programming, developing an Android app requires you use and understand Java, Android Studio, and how to build and deploy an Android app.
For information on developing Android apps see, developer.android.com.

If you are not an Android developer we would recommend Bot Libre's app development service.
We can develop you your own app for as little as $100 through our Diamond upgrade, contact sales@botlibre.biz for more information.

Step 1 - Download Android Studio

Android apps are normally developed using Android Studio.
You can download Android Studio here.

You will need to install Android Studio on your computer, and also install the Android SDK, and an Android emulator.

Step 2 - Open Bot Libre Demo app

The Bot Libre SDK includes a complete demo chat bot app, with the full source code.
You can download the demo "SantaBot" app from GitHub here.

The demo app includes an Android Studio project, so you can open the project in Android Studio.
You should be able to build and run the project from Android Studio in the emulator, or on your phone.

Step 3 - Change the Bot Info

The demo app uses the "Santa Bot" app. You will want to change it to use your own bot.
If you do not have a bot yet, you can create on Bot Libre by following this article.

If you go to you're bot's main page on Bot Libre, you can get its "Id" from its "Details" tab.
You can also get your user accounts "Application ID" from your "User Details" page. Copy both of these values.

Open the "MainActivity.java" file in Android Studio and update the static variables, "applicationId", "launchInstanceId", "launchInstanceName", and save the file.

Now when you run your app it should use your bot.

Step 4 - Change Icons and Images

Next you will want to change the app's splash image and icon for your own bot.

To change the app's icon in Android Studio right click on project or select the menu "File", "New", "Image Asset", and create a new icon for the app.

You will also want to update the image files "icon.png", "logo.png", and "bot.png" in the "res" "drawables" directory.

Step 5 - Change the App Info

An Android app is defined by its manifest.xml file and application package. You need to choose your own app/package name and update your manifest file.

The Android package also affects how the special "R" class is generated in Android. Unfortunately this R class must match the application package, so you need to rename all imports to the "org.botlibre.santabot" package.
To do this select the menu "Edit", "Find", "Replace in Path". Enter the old package and the new package and replace all references.

You should be able to new build and deploy your new app.
You can also build an "apk" file, and upload the file to Android app stores such as Google Play.

Monday, December 18, 2017

Bot Libre now supports bot analytics and charts for chat and social media.
Analytics provide statistical data on how well your bot is performing, including analytics such as engaged conversations, user sentiment, and response confidence.

You can now view your bot's analytics for various date ranges as a chart or as data in the table. This newly introduced feature allows you to see how popular your bot is, and compare your bot to other bots using analytics. You can access your bot's analytics page from the bot's 'Admin Console' by clicking on the 'Analytics' link.

To view the bot's analytics chart simply select the media type from 'Chart' drop down select box. By default you'll see your bot's analytics chart for the current week. However, you can view your bot's analytics chart for duration period of either day, week, month, or everything. You can also group your bot's analytics either by day, week, or month using 'Group By' drop down select box. 'Group By' select enables you to view your bot's analytics chart for a given duration period as cumulative set of points. The grouping of data points makes the bot's general analytic trend direction more apparent. After selecting the media type chart, duration and group, you can then view or hide a particular bot's statistic by checking or unchecking the check box beside each analytic name.

Figure 1: Analytic Options

Figure 1 shows all analytics for every social media type. Note that the colour of analytic name beside each check box corresponds to the colour of each analytic curve on the chart. Also note that in some circumstances you may see less analytics curves on the graph than the analytic name checks. This is because some curves are plotted on top of other analytics curves because their data point sets are identical.

Figure 2: Analytics Chart for Social Media

Figure 2 shows graphs of selected bot's analytic for 'All' social media types. Note that the number of analytic curves is less than the number of checked bot's analytics because some curves have the same data points and hence overlay each other.

Analytics

Bot Libre provides many different analytics to help you monitor your bot's effectiveness in chat and social media.
Analytics for tracking conversations, messages, engaged conversations, conversation length, sentiment, and confidence are available.

Analytic

Description

Conversations

Total conversations the bot had for all chat and social media platforms.

Messages

Total messages the bot had for all chat and social media platforms.

Conversation Length

Total conversation length the bot had for all chat and social media platforms.

Engaged Conversations

Total number of conversations that bot had with at least three messages.

Default Responces

Total number of messages the bot did not find an answer for. When the bot does not know a response to a question, it
uses its 'default' response.

Confidence

Avarage confidence the bot had on its responses based on the user question and the bot's matching trained question.
Exact question matches and pattern matches are considered to be 100%, and default responses are 0%.

Sentiment

User's average sentiment or emotion to the bot's responses, either good or bad. If the user's questions seem very
happy the sentiment will be 100%. If the user seems very unhappy the sentiment will be -100%. If the user did not
express any emotion, then the sentiment will be 0%.

Connects

Total number of times a user or admin connected to the bot through the web or mobile.

Chats

Total number of chats that the bot had.

Live Chats

Total number of live chats that the bod had.

Errors

Total number of errors the bot had while responding to chats.

Response Time

How long it took the bot to respond the the user's message for chat and all social media platforms.

Imports

Total number of scripts or response lists imported into the bot.

Tweets

Total number of tweets the bot posted for Twitter social media.

Retweets

Total number of retweets the bot has made for Twitter social media.

Tweets Processed

Total number of tweets bot has read.

Direct Messages

Total number of private, user to user chat message for Twitter social media.

Facebook Posts

Total number of Facebook posts the bot has made for Facebook social media.

Facebook Likes

Total number of Facebook posts that bot 'likes'.

Facebook Messages

Total number of Facebook posts processed by the bot for Facebook social media.

Facebook Messages Processed

Total number of Facebook messages that the bot has read for Facebook social media.

Skype Messages

Total number of Skype messages the bot has read.

Kik Messages

Total number of Kik messages the bot has read.

WeChat Messages

Total number of WeChat messages the bot has read.

Slack Messages

Total number of Slack messages the bot has read.

Slack Posts

Total number of Slack posts the bot has made for Slack social media.

Telegram Messages

Total number of Telegram messages the bot has read.

Telegram Posts

Total number of Telegram posts the bot has made for Telegram social media.

Email

Total number of emails the bod has sent.

Emails Processed

Total number of emails the bot has read.

SMS Sent

Total number of SMS messages the bot has sent.

SMS Processed

Total number of SMS messages the bot has read.

Bot Analytics Table

Figure 3: Bot Analytics Table

Figure 3 shows the same bot's analytics data point as graphs above, but only inside a table.